“Hey,” Mimi said. “No need to look so stricken. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea.”
Joe pulled himself back from thoughts of Karen and focused on Mimi. She wasn’t as detached as she’d like to believe after all. In fact, reading behind the shuttered brightness of her eyes, he would say she was far from detached. “What happened then? To your dad?”
“I don’t know. He called from Mount Rushmore and spoke to my granddad. He said he was having a great time and had lost track of the days and he didn’t know when he’d be back.”
“That’s all he said to you?”
“I didn’t talk to him,” she said, again a little too pertly. Too nonchalant. “Busy playing capture the flag. That was the last time we heard from him. Far as I know, he’s still out there somewhere, and time still hasn’t caught up.” She grinned and Joe realized how thoroughly her self-protective insouciance had been constructed.
“And after all this time, you’re still looking? Still getting reports from this Otell Weber?”
“Still? Oh. No.” She shook her head as if she was denying some unpleasant accusation. “No. I’ve left it all alone for decades. I just hired Otell Weber last spring because I got this postcard. It must have been lost in the mail and”—she gave an embarrassed little laugh—“and, ah, it finally made it to me. It was from my dad, written thirty years ago. It was sent from Montana and I knew the people Granddad had hired originally to look for him had looked in North Dakota, so I…I just…I really just shoulda let it slide. I mean. What did I think would happen?” She laughed again. She was talking too quickly. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. None of this can be interesting to you. I usually don’t babble about, you know—”
“Personal stuff?” he suggested quietly.
She snapped her fingers at him. “Bingo. Personal stuff. Sorry.”
“No, please. It’s interesting.” He purposefully kept his tone cool and objective, guessing that sympathy or concern would send her running. “Did your private eye find something?” He nodded toward the papers in her hand.
She looked down as though she’d forgotten she held them. “Maybe. I don’t know. He actually found a guy who remembers seeing Dad. What are the odds?” She shook her head ruefully.
“You must be eager to find out if anything comes of it.”
She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I have this feeling that I should have just—”
“Let things slide.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” he asked curiously. “Why didn’t you ever try to find him before this?”
And just like that, that simply, all the bright, fake nonchalance fell off, swept away like a magician’s cape, revealing the truth beneath. Her gaze was frightened, anxious, and bleak.
“I was afraid I’d find him,” she said so quietly he barely heard her. “You’d think I’d know better.” Giving him a small sad smile that told him she thought he’d know exactly what she meant, she slapped the file lightly against her thighs and got up.
The odd thing was that he did. He understood perfectly; if her father was dead, that was the end, and if her father was alive, well, then, that, too, was the end. Because he’d never come back for her.
“I better take the dogs for a walk.” She edged by him and brushed her fingertips against his shoulder. “Touch.”
Chapter Thirty-five
“Could you set the wheelchair up inside the door? I’d appreciate it,” Prescott asked, hanging between his crutches inside Bombadil House’s front door. Prescott wasn’t supposed to use the crutches except to transfer from one area to another. The rest of the time he was relegated to the wheelchair. “Thanks for driving me from the airstrip.”
“No problem,” said the pilot of the plane he’d hired—well, actually, Joe had hired—to fly him from Duluth. Nice of Joe, but Prescott didn’t need his father’s help. He had Mignonette.
“You’ll be all right?” the pilot asked, returning with the wheelchair and deftly unfolding it.
“Yes. Someone’s here. I’ll be fine,” Prescott said, smiling.
Thus assured, the driver clapped Prescott on the shoulder and took off. Since neither Mignonette nor the dogs had greeted him when he’d opened the front door, he guessed they must be out taking a walk.
Prescott gently lowered himself into the wheelchair and set his crutches against the wall. It had been eleven days since he’d fallen in the swimming pool, his stay in the hospital elongated by a second surgery on his ankle, but all had gone well and now he was home. He took a deep breath and looked around in delight, noticing that all the furniture had been pushed back and the rugs rolled up and stored against the wall in order to make using the wheelchair easier. She was so thoughtful. And the place looked beautiful. The tiles gleamed and the granite countertop in the kitchen sparkled. The hardwood floor had a deep luster. She’d really taken wonderful care of his home. He’d known she would.
He rolled the wheelchair down the hall and into the kitchen, turning toward the living—
“Hello, Prescott,” Joe said quietly.
He started and looked around, spotting his father lurking in the shadows across the room. He was sitting in a wheelchair, one leg sticking straight out on the footrest, his hands folded in his lap, his expression pensive.
“What are you doing here?” Prescott blurted out.
“I came to take care of you. I arrived four days ago to get your home ready, but then this.” Joe ruefully indicated his leg. “I could ask the same of you, you know. I didn’t think you were supposed to be released until tomorrow.”
“My blood work came back fine, so they let me go early,” he said; then, “What happened to you?”
“I had an accident. I wrenched my knee and dislocated my shoulder. I should be out of this thing in a couple more days. Sorry about having had to rearrange the furniture. You’ll find it more convenient, too, I hope.”
“Where is Mi—Mrs. Olson? Where are the dogs? Did you send her away?”
Joe studied him a second. “Come with me, Prescott.” He rolled across the floor with an adroitness that Prescott couldn’t help but admire, stopping in front of the windows overlooking the lake. Prescott rolled his wheelchair up beside Joe’s with a great deal less dexterity.
“There they are.”
Prescott followed the direction Joe pointed. On the lake below he saw his dogs running away from a cross-country skier hot on their trail.
“What’s going on? Who is that? Why is he chasing my dogs? Where’s Mrs. Olson? She’s supposed to be here. Not you!” All of this came tumbling out of his mouth as he watched in horror as the demented cross-country skier pursued his frantic dogs.
Joe didn’t even turn his head. “That’s Mrs. Olson, and she’s not a Mrs., she’s a Ms.”
“What?”
“And she’s not chasing the dogs, they’re pulling her. She’s skijoring. They’re attached to her by traces and they’re pulling her. I taught them that,” he said wistfully. “It’s really fun. She’s been out there for almost two hours. She left me here. Alone.”
That was Mignonette Olson? Prescott stared disbelievingly. That careening skier on the lake was his placid, middle-aged, preeminently mellow neighbor? “You’re kidding.”
Joe might not have heard him. “Don’t you think that shows a lack of human feeling? She must know I’m bored, that sitting here while she’s out there—with the dogs,” he hastily added, “is making me crazy. With envy. Of being out there. Not of being with her.”
Joe apparently knew more about Mignonette than Prescott did. He hated that. “How do you know she’s not a missus?” he demanded.
“She told me. She was here with the dogs when I arrived.”
“Why did you arrive?”
“The physical therapist said you’d need help for a while and I know how difficult it is for you to be comfortable around strangers.”
Prescott opened his mouth and then snapped it shut, unwillingly affected by Joe’
s concern for him. However, that didn’t make up for the fact that he was here and Mignonette was not.
“If you saw that Mi—Ms. Olson was here, why didn’t you just go home?” He didn’t want Joe here. He wanted Mignonette Olson here. He’d imagined mornings eating oatmeal with her and afternoons napping while she moved around the house, tidying things. They’d spend the evenings playing chess (or checkers if chess was too difficult to teach her). He would help her research a health insurance provider and teach her how to set up an online retirement fund. They’d be a little family. Mignonette Olson, Bill, Merry, Sam, and him. Instead, he had Joe.
He looked over to find Joe regarding him pityingly. A familiar sight. “Well?” he demanded.
“She didn’t want to stay here, Prescott. I did.”
“I don’t believe you,” Prescott said angrily, his resolve to keep his voice as level and melodious as Joe’s disappearing. “Why would she go to the trouble to take such good care of Bombadil House—and yes, Joe, I named it after a house in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t care!—if she didn’t want to stay?”
“She hasn’t taken good care of the house. I’ve hired a Mrs. McGoldrick to come in every other day and clean, but with Mimi and the dogs around, I should have made it daily. She is such a slob.” He shook his head. “And those dogs…”
No, she wasn’t! Casual, maybe, but not…unclean. Prescott loathed grime. He refused to believe his paragon didn’t share this view.
“If the house got a little untidy, it was only because it was too much work for her,” Prescott said. “I should have realized. It wasn’t fair to ask her to keep up a house and tend the dogs.”
“No, that’s not the problem,” Joe said. “The problem is that Mimi is categorically opposed to expending effort that she considers unnecessary. And that pretty much covers eighty-five percent of everything. She is undisciplined and proud of it.”
Where the hell did Joe get off calling Mignonette “Mimi”?
“Look at her, Prescott,” Joe continued, tipping his head in Mignonette’s direction. “She’s vibrant, lovely, intelligent, and a world-class slacker.”
Joe finished with a deep heartfelt sigh. In calmer moments, Prescott would have thought this an odd way to end disparaging someone. But as this character assassination was directed at the woman he revered, Prescott spun his chair around and faced Joe. “Take that back.”
Joe looked at him, nonplussed. Amused, but nonplussed, nonetheless. “Or what? You’re going to hit me?”
Prescott lurched forward, delivering a roundhouse blow. Unfortunately, it connected only with air. Joe, segueing from nonplussed to startled, had wheeled his chair back. “Cut it out, Pres. Watch it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Take it back!” His jaw clenched, Prescott shot forward in his chair. This time when he swung, the force propelled him out of his chair and into Joe. With a crash, Joe’s wheelchair fell over, sending them both sprawling.
“Ouch!” Joe yelped.
Prescott, saved the majority of the impact by the layers of gauze and plaster, lifted himself up on his forearms and began dragging himself—and his plasticine-encased lower limbs—toward his father. “You deserved it. And it’s Mignonette, not Mimi!”
“Jesus, Pres! Have you lost your mind?” Joe asked, cradling his wrist against his chest. Then, seeing the look on his son’s face, he backed away, pushing with his good leg and skidding on his good elbow.
“And don’t call me ‘Pres,’” Prescott ground out.
“Fine! Have you lost your mind, Prescott?”
“She’s a warm, caring, wonderful woman, and you have no right to call her names. Apologize.”
“Names?! So help me, Prescott, if you don’t stop acting like a third grader with a crush on his teacher—ow!”
Chapter Thirty-six
“Whew! I’m sweatier than a used towel in a Turkish steam bath!” Mimi called up the stairs.
Pleased with the colorful analogy designed specifically to make Joe wince, Mimi slapped the snow from her jeans and toed off her cross-country boots. She’d entered through the walk-out level under the deck, currently beyond Joe’s scope and therefore not subject to his housekeeperly criticism. She started shedding outerwear with little regard for where it fell. Outside, the dogs lay panting in the snow. Experience told her they wouldn’t be asking to come in for at least half an hour.
“Yoo-hoo! Joe? You’re not sulking again, are you? The doc said you could put weight on that knee tomorrow. Then maybe I’ll let you lean on me and we’ll walk around the garage.”
It had been four days since Joe had gone aerial, and since then he was getting grumpier by the hour. Unused to being physically inert and even more unused to depending on anyone for anything, he was having a hard time adjusting. Well, he couldn’t be any more unused to depending on someone than she was having someone depend on her. And now she had four beings looking to her for food, exercise, companionship, and conversation.
This last had the most unexpected outcome. Not because of how much she had learned about Joe—she was a tele-medium, for chrissakes; her stock-in-trade was listening—but because in the course of their conversations Mimi had revealed more about herself to Joe than she had revealed to any half dozen people in as many years. And it had begun with that stupid package from Otell Weber.
The contents had been mostly Xeroxes of handwritten notes, but the upshot was that Otell had discovered a very faint trail to pursue. He warned her not to get her hopes up and, surprisingly, they weren’t. She wasn’t reacting at all like she’d expected; she was too busy taking care of Mr. Clean and the Dustmops. She tugged off her ski pants, disconcerted by how much she looked forward to verbal sparring with Joe, suspecting it was just a substitute for another type of heated encounter.
Joe was dangerous. Sometimes she found her heart doing stupid little pitter-pats when he made some sly observation designed to make her laugh or she caught him watching her or when he rolled his shirtsleeves up over those fabulous forearms. There should—would, she corrected herself—be no romantic relationship in their future. Sadly, they knew each other too well now.
She could see how it would play out. They’d enjoy the affair but after it was over they’d wonder about each other, feel like maybe a follow-up affair would be polite. Worry that one or the other had become more attached or, worse, less attached. Make a terrible error in judgment and phone, get his voice mail, hang up, and later that night wake up wondering whether her own phone number had shown up on his caller ID and whether he’d seen it and thought, “Thank God I ducked that call!” It would be horrible.
But that was the future that wasn’t going to happen. Right now was right now and she wondered why Joe wasn’t haranguing her about bringing snow into the house. Was he asleep? Was he waiting for her? Would he greet her with the heart-stopping smile she got when she reappeared after even a short absence?
By the time she’d finished tugging on her jeans, her heart was doing a calypso of anticipation. She decided to take a leaf from her own book and let it dance. No harm in a little heart dance. Good for the cardio-vas system. She took the stairs two at a time. “Tell you what, Joe. We’ll lug your wheelchair into Fawn Creek for dinner…”
Prescott Tierney sat in a wheelchair by the window overlooking the lake.
“Prescott! When did you get here? Why didn’t you say something…?” She trailed off, becoming aware of his sullen, guarded expression. His hands were crossed tightly in his lap, his hair disheveled. The shoulder of his black T-shirt was ripped. “Where’s Joe?”
“Here.”
She turned at a sound. Joe sat in his wheelchair at the other end of the bank of windows, trying unsuccessfully to look natural, his lack of success due in large part to the shiner blooming around his left eye.
“Hello, Mimi,” Joe said conversationally. “How was the snow today?”
“Screw the snow. What the hell happened to you?”
“A little accident. Prescott and I had a
slight disagreement and—”
“You hit your father?” Mimi spun around and faced Prescott again, ambushed by her own unexpected anger.
“No!” both Tierney males said in unison. Her anger receded.
“No,” Joe repeated. “We fell out of our wheelchairs and…ah, I grabbed a table leg. It teetered and the book on it slid off and hit me in the eye.”
“And yet, still I have questions,” Mimi murmured dryly.
“I tried to hit him,” Prescott put in abruptly. The anger flared again, but this time Mimi was prepared for it. Whatever happened between Joe and Prescott was no concern of hers.
“He did.” Amazingly, Joe seemed proud of this.
“I could have, too, after the book hit him. But I didn’t want to lower myself.”
“Why did you try to hit your father?” Mimi asked Prescott.
“He said terrible things about you.”
It probably said something about how her and Joe’s relationship had progressed over the last few days that Mimi didn’t at once suspect that Joe had warned Prescott she was out to take him for every penny. Not at once. It took a few seconds.
It probably said more about their relationship that, a few seconds later, she decided Joe wouldn’t have warned Prescott of this because just yesterday Joe had admitted he’d misjudged her, saying that she was too lazy to try to con anyone. She suspected she was supposed to be embarrassed by his assessment. She wasn’t.
“What did he say?” she asked Prescott.
“He said you were a slob. That you were irresponsible.”
Mimi snorted. Prescott looked shocked. “Compared to him? Yeah, me and the rest of the world.”
Prescott frowned. “He said you were undisciplined and stubborn.”
“I did not say stubborn,” Joe piped in. “One has to take a stand to be stubborn.”
“Ouch,” Mimi said. “To the rest I plead guilty as charged. Now, does anyone want some pop?”
She could see how disappointed Prescott was. He’d been expecting her to demand he and his father meet with pistols at dawn, and she was suggesting Diet Coke. Poor Prescott. He didn’t know her at all. Not like Joe did.
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